


Living, Dead

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Akai Chou | Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Genre: Community: no_true_pair, Disturbing, F/M, Knifeplay, Masochism, Non-Graphic Violence, Sadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:53:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the forest, she hurts him.</p><p>Prompt: "leaving visible marks of ownership/dominance." Involves kink but no actual sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living, Dead

Out in the forest, she hurts him.

Nobody knows, maybe not even Yae. Ryozo and Sae leave separately, return separately, only meeting in the isolated spot where they will not be interrupted. Their first meeting there was an accident, at least he thinks so, but then he's never seen her apart from her sister before, so perhaps he's wrong. Perhaps she was waiting for him.

When Sae and Yae are together, it's Yae who catches his attention. She is lively and her eyes sparkle, her soft mouth seems to smile when there's nothing to smile at, she catches his eyes and then looks away coquettishly until his thoughts are full of her. Next to Yae, Sae is too quiet and passive, like something dead.

But when she is alone with him there is a deep rage in her, a consuming fury that he can't trace the roots of, and he's sure he doesn't like it, but he keeps coming back, doesn't he?

She has a little knife for trimming candles; she uses it to leave marks on his skin underneath his kimono. At night, when he'd rather be dreaming of Yae, the cuts come alive, little stinging threads, so he can't think of Yae without thinking of Sae as well. A shadow, full of hatred. She is there in her burial kimono, turning his dreams into nightmares.

But he keeps coming back to that lonely place in the forest where she strips him and sets to work, calm and deliberate but with the darkness in her eyes that makes him fear her, makes him obey when she tells him _be silent_ or _don't move_ or _bow_ or _beg_.

Sometimes she makes him kneel in the shallow river, or binds him, though he never tries to resist or get away. She never touches him, or lets him touch her; the only point of contact is the blade of the knife.

One day a smear of blood gets on the white sleeve of her kimono. It is still there at dinner, scarlet, as she as she sits meekly beside her sister. He finds the difference bewildering, until she meets his eyes and he sees the loathing still there. The new scratches throb. There is an ache that runs deeper than pain, that will not be relieved until she hurts him again.

'I have to leave,' he tells her one day. 'Makabe – ' She makes a new mark on the inside of his elbow, and his words run aground. He tries again. 'I'll come back on the night of the festival.'

She laughs, and the sound is high and chilling. 'I'd better give you something to remember me by.' This time she cuts deeper.

*

And he does remember. When he comes back to find the village gone and Yae weeping outside the broken gate, he can't forget. When he holds Yae in his arms and tells her he'll take care of her, she presses against the marks that are still there on his skin. Sae is alive after all.


End file.
